Gesicht, an android investigator for Europol, has been assigned to track down the killer of Montblanc, a decommissioned combat champion robot. While it seems only a machine could have committed the offense, the slaying of a famed robotic‑rights advocate raises questions about the perpetrator"s identity. Except for an isolated, inexplicable event that took place eight years earlier, robots are coded to be incapable of murdering humans. Yet the absence of human fingerprints at the scene and the congruence in methods push Gesicht to believe that the two homicide cases may stem from a single entity—whether human or synthetic.
Soon after Montblanc"s demise, another veteran war machine is covertly destroyed. Gesicht discerns a pattern: both victims were among the seven most formidable war bots ever built. Determined to halt the killer from targeting the remaining five legends, he enlists Atom, an android who resembles a boy. Together they must track down the rogue assailant before further killings unfold, lest society"s fragile balance between humans and machines collapse.
The investigation forces Gesicht and Atom to confront an organization manipulating events. Their pursuit becomes a race against time, for each new murder threatens to destabilize society.
